Not just twisting hips, a slick pompadour, a check-this-out sneer and defiant music that altered American cultural history.

"I really wasn't aware at the time," Bruce said of his 1993 musical re-incarnation as a Presley prototype, often referred to as an "impersonator." "Later on, I believed one out of every four people on the planet is one. A quarter of the world's population is an Elvis impersonator."

Well, it's not that extreme. Yet.

Bruce, a born drummer and aspiring singer-songwriter who spent last week doing weekend Elvis shows on the East Coast, certainly isn't complaining.

Only Bruce and his Elvisonic quintet get to play once a month at Disneyland. They've been doing that for 10 years.

Only Bruce, born in Moscow, Idaho, and a Palm Springs resident for 10 years, discovered his Elvis-ness after crashing a Los Angeles morning drive-time radio show.

"I love it very much," said Bruce, who demonstrates why and how Saturday during a "kind of valentine-oriented" show named for a seminal Presley hit ("Love Me Tender," 1956) at Lodi's Hutchins Street Square.

"We mix and match a little bit," Bruce said of the 30-song, two-hour show. "But it's even more high-octane. We keep it more and more rockin'.

"We've been playing together so long, every show just gets better than the show before. Of course, Elvis had so many wonderful rockers, but he had such beautiful ballads, too."

Bruce - "who likes to leave out my age because people get caught up in it" - is a somewhat unique Elvis entertainer.

He drums in Los Angeles rockabilly groups - Bruce's musicians plays in other bands - and has re-focused on developing a career as an acoustic guitar-playing singer-songwriter (Presley didn't write songs).

"I've always aspired to it beyond my Elvis gig," Bruce said. "I've always been a songwriter and drummer first. I admit that, because Elvis has kept me so busy, I've become too complacent. I try to remind myself what I really set out to do: Record my own music. I'm way overdue for that."

It would be - is - what "I classify as 'Americana,' " Bruce said. "I'm a big - I love - all kinds of genres. I write songs from the American perspective. Kind of roots-based. For someone making a living singing others' material, it means that much more to do my own material. The phone doesn't ring as much for my own material."

It rang so often in 1993 that he and his roommates' Playa del Rey phone became clogged with 40 messages.

The guys on KLOS radio's "Mark & Brian Show" (Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps) were recognizing the Aug. 16 death of Presley (1935-77). A line from "Gotta Lot O' Livin' to Do" (1957) was in dispute.

Bruce thought he could help: "So I got all gussied up and showed up at KLOS at 7 a.m. as a '50s Elvis. 'That's the angle. I'll settle their dispute.' I hoped they'd put me on the air. I almost turned around. That was the scariest time ever."

It being L.A., the guard let Bruce in ("Elvis is here to see you"). The DJs spent the rest of their shift with Bruce as a guest and gave their 1.3 million listeners his phone number. He'd provided it on a business card made at Kinko's.

"Ninety percent of them were highly inappropriate," he said of the phone messages. A few were legit. He wound up singing like Elvis during a Miss California Beauty Pageant with a sock-hop theme.

"That's where it started," Bruce said. "That kind of set the wheels in motion" as he became the "Bob & Tom" go-to guy on Elvis trivia between 1993 and 1997. Which has proven useful in his Elvis tribute show.

Bruce grew up in Pullman, Wash., where dad Richard was a Washington State University professor.

"I've always been drawn to arts and always loved entertaining," said Bruce, initially entranced by a "sparkly blue" high school student's drum kit when he was 5. "I wanted to be a drummer."

His brother Dan learned guitar and plays it in his career as a minister. The family - mom Arden, a speech pathologist, died five years ago - spent 18 months in Brazil, where Bruce's retired dad now works on forest-economics issues in the Amazon jungle.

Even Brazilian children knew who "Elvis" was.

A rockabilly type, Bruce - a communications major at the University of Idaho - moved to Los Angeles at some friends' urging. He worked selling art and tending bar.

"People always were telling me how much I looked like him," said Bruce, married for 10 years to Laura. "I never really thought a person could make a living doing this. It's amazing how creative you can get when you're starving."

He understands why Presley's still imitated and venerated.

"It's the songs," he said. "They're just that good. They're just as catchy. Just as relevant as when folks heard them on the radio for the first time.

"Elvis was an extraordinary talent with a very unique style. It was brand new. People just didn't know what to think. The way he moved when he sang just freaked people out."

Not anymore, but the legacy endures: "I see 4-year-olds singing words to 'Hound Dog,' 'Jailhouse Rock' and 'Don't Be Cruel.' Young people are finding out about these songs. Grandparents bring grandkids to expose this music to them."

Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsaurorecord.